Soul-Fasted
by sallybeth631
Summary: After Rey and Ben Solo share a night together through their mysterious Force Bond, Rey discovers that their union has resulted in something neither of them expected. Are they ready to take on the responsibilities of having a child, born of passion and the Force?
1. Chapter 1

Rey's chest heaved and her stomach somersaulted within her. How long had it been?

The more she asked herself that question, the more distant it grew. Almost as though it had never happened.

Like Ben had never appeared to her, that unmistakable look of want, of need in his dark eyes. It pulled something out of her, something she'd never known she had. A desire equal to his own.

Like they'd never touched each other in more ways than one. Like the Force hadn't lain them bare, burning them to their deepest selves in the fire of a kiss.

How long?

As though they'd never lain together. As though he'd never been inside her, and she inside him. Like he'd never held her so close she thought she could live in his arms forever. Like he'd never breathed life into her skin with every lingering kiss, the feel of his tongue carving paths beneath her body's thick surface.

Now she knew it was true, that it had really happened. All of it. Every touch, every taste, every kiss, every breath, every whispered invocation of his name, and every star-shattering sensation it awoke within her. Though they hadn't been in the same room, though they hadn't really touched, somehow their Bond had allowed them to, letting them enter into-how had the Lanais put it?-a "fasting of souls."

Could people really do that? Fuse their souls together just by connecting their bodies in certain places, in certain ways? Without any help from the Force!

The more she thought about it, the more Rey wondered whether it had anything to do with the Force at all. Or everything.

Already, she could feel him grinding his teeth halfway across the galaxy, wordlessly begging her to stop overcomplicating it. _It was far simpler than she realized_ , his mind groaned, _They were "soul-fasted" as she called it,_ mated _, in a more general sense._ Mated before the Force.

 _Now who's over complicating the situation?_ she thought back at him.

His knowing, wolf-like grin sent shivers deep within her. Once again, her attention was drawn to the space below her stomach, the place nobody knew about. And all at once, she knew what had happened. Their "mating" had created something that was fast making its home in that secret space within her.

 _A mistake?_ her mind asked no one.

 _No_ , her heart answered her, _a child. Yours and his._

"A child," Rey murmured to herself, "Mine and his. His and mine. Ours. _Our child_."

The shock hit them both like a tidal wave. Light years away, his stomach reeled from the force of her revelation. She nearly threw up herself.

 _Rey_ , he said, his voice trembling, _are you sure?_ When only silence answered him, he said, _Understand, Rey. You have to be absolutely certain._

"I am," she said aloud, the strength of her conviction echoing in her core, booming through his mind.

 _Then I must find you_ , he said. She could already sense his body preparing itself to depart. In his mind he was already there with her.

 _Are you sure?_ she asked without meaning to.

 _Yes_ , he said, and she knew that he was.

 _How?_

He paused, the Force churning excitedly around him. _I will find a way. I will find you. I promise. You have to find a place where we won't be found when I do._

It only took Rey a moment to think about it. _How soon can you get to Ahch-To?_

Ben paused again. The faintest smile sparked at the corners of his lips. _I'll be there_ , he said.

Rey breathed slowly, her stomach quaking again, _You better. I-_ , she steeled herself and bled the words into the Bond, _I need you._

Her palsied fear brushed against him, and he felt it as sharply as she did. He had the same fear, and it had to be tamed if this was going to work.

His certainty filled him up now, overflowing, fear-drowning. Envisioning her in her room somewhere far away from him, he projected himself through space and time and whispered in her ear, _I'll see you soon. I promise._

To say that Ben had never imagined himself as a father would be an understatement; the thought was as distant to him as a stranger in a crowd. In all the years of his life, it had never so much as crossed his mind until that very moment.

He felt as though he'd been trapped in a parallel body, oblivious to the most natural human instincts, starved of the longing for the bond of a family of his own. Yet here he was, preparing to leave, carrying only what he needed onto his TIE-silencer. He wouldn't dare fly out in anything bigger; the shuttle would be conspicuous to say the least, and he didn't want to have to travel with anyone but himself. His personal pilots would take him anywhere without question, but he prefered to eliminate the very real possibility of word reaching Hux that he'd left and where he'd gone. Besides, one of the many perks of being Supreme Leader was that he could leave whenever he wished and not even Hux needed to know where he went.

Two words ran through his mind as he acknowledged the hangar officer's salute with a slight nod and began powering up the silencer:

 _Rey_

 _Child_

 _Rey_

 _Child_

Then one word, just a name, as the fighter flew beyond the pull of the destroyer's tractor beam and jumped to hyperspace:

 _Rey_

The only one that mattered. The only thing he cared about beyond his own survival, beyond the galaxy itself.

 _Rey._

How could he have let this happen? he thought. How could he have let things get so far? From a single touch of hands to a fasting of souls, as though it was always inevitable. As though it was their destiny.

But to do what?

To be together? Impossible! With a never-ending war between them, conflict ripping the galaxy apart-surely it would always find a way to keep them apart, leaving them with nothing but the agony of being ever-aware of what the other is feeling.

What then?

Was their destiny simply to have this child and protect it any way they could from the hell they now struggled to survive? How could any child grow up feeling safe and fulfilled in such a chaotic environment?

Impossible?

Perhaps not.

For now, Ben tuned out his inner maelstrom of thoughts and focused all his energy on one thing: getting to Rey.

She'd told him that she _needed_ him.

When was the last time he'd felt truly needed by anyone? He barely understood what need meant when he was torn from his mother's arms to train with Luke, but even now he knew that she'd needed him then, if only to keep him safe, to love him. The thought nearly pinched a tear from Ben's eye, and he fought against it.

What did Luke ever need him for? The only thing Ben could think of was to not turn to the dark side and threaten the peace of the whole galaxy once again. He'd failed miserably at that, so he could only conclude that aside from just being his nephew, his uncle really didn't need him for anything.

His father needed nobody and nothing. All he needed was himself. Himself, his wife, his best friend, and his son. Nothing else really mattered to him.

Snoke had filled his head with lies, and over the years, Ben had deluded himself that he was somehow the antidote to the galaxy's disorder, the the galaxy needed his legacy, to rise above the ashes of the Empire and lead it to a New Order.

In his tireless pursuit of power, he'd let down nearly everyone who truly needed him. His uncle. His father. His mother.

Now, Rey needed _him_. Nothing else, not his legacy, not his power, not his mind or abilities. Just him.

And by the blood of his family, he would not let her down.


	2. Chapter 2

Rey almost couldn't remember how she'd managed to get away from the base. It had something to do with Leia, and that deep, all-knowing light in her eyes. Something in the firm grasp of her time-worn hands, in her motherly embrace before she sent Rey on her way, saying that she understood.

Only Leia, Rose, Finn, and Chewie knew of her departure. But Leia was the only one who knew why Rey had to leave. Rey didn't even have to tell her; one look and she'd sensed the truth radiating from her body, claiming the empty space around her in a vibrating aura of fear and excitement.

Leia had always been good at keeping secrets. But none, save for the truth about who her father really was, had shaken her as deeply as this one. It seemed impossible. Yet there was no doubt in her mind as to what was really going on: Rey was pregnant, and her son, Ben, the Supreme Leader of the First Order, himself somewhere lightyears away from them, was the father.

But although Leia could sense clear as day the _essence_ of a life growing inside of Rey, she could not feel the presence of any physical child or fetus. Granted, it was too soon to be able to sense much of anything, but it baffled her that while a defined Force signature emanated from Rey's body, separate from her own, it seemed to come from nothing in particular. As though it wasn't really a child, so much as it was the _ghost_ of a child.

Not dead.

But not quite... _alive_.

Chewie fired up the Falcon and they lifted off, escaping the planet's gravitational hold before Rey could think twice about what she was doing.

Before they left, Rey confided in Chewie the real reason for her leaving, and why she wanted him to pilot the Falcon this time. Chewie, ever understanding of Rey's predicaments and all too aware of her complicated connection with Ben, took the strange news in stride, surprising Rey somewhat with his ability to accept what would seem impossible to anyone else.

Enveloped in his huge, warm, scruffy arms, Rey had forsaken for a moment the fear that consumed her, the magic spell of his unconditional friendship and love draining the anxiety from her body.

Rey laid in the coordinates for Ahch-To and sat back in the copilot's chair, trying to steady her breathing. Her fingers twitched with restless electricity, and more than once Chewie felt obliged to place a reassuring paw over her hand. By the time they'd jumped to hyperspace her knuckles had gone white and her clothes, the most comfortable ones that she owned, had begun to suffocate her.

Once the still black of empty space punctured by stars frozen in place gave way to the blinding blue streaks of hyperspace, Chewie gruffly told her to go lie down and try to get some rest. Rey was in no mood to argue.

They would arrive in a few hours and she had nothing to do in the meantime but think. Chewie had nothing to do but worry about her.

Almost as soon as she collapsed onto one of the narrow beds in the lounge area, Rey drowned in the heat of a dream that she'd had countless times before, which she wouldn't remember having when she woke up.

 _She found herself in darkness, felt it everywhere, pressing against every inch of her body. No breath or sound existed here, but Rey didn't need to breathe or speak. All she knew was that she had to find him. He was close, she knew that, but she couldn't see anything beyond her own glowing hands, her only light in the dark of the dream._

 _Soon she began to hear things, whispers of long ago and yet to come. Voices from the past and the future in an ever shifting mixture, a constant conjunction of harmony and chaos, balance and discord. Amidst them, one murmured her name, and she knew it was him._

 _She reached out as though she could feel the depth and softness of his voice wrapped around her name. When she touched his face, she would have let out a gasp of relief if she'd had the breath to do it. He stood right in front of her, and suddenly it was as though her eyes had been closed the whole time and had now opened. His face glowed brighter than her hands, and his eyes saw only her._

Rey woke from the dream, drenched in sweat, shivering from the sudden cold of space that always found a way to squeeze through the kinks in the ship. Immediately, her mind grasped for memories of the images her subconscious had just played out. Only fragments of shattered sensations remained.

She stood up, taking a moment to steady the dizziness that washed over her, and made her way back to the cockpit, still trying to remember anything about the dream she'd just had.

A million light years away, Ben Solo woke from the dream, just barely containing the panic that threatened to bury him alive. After forcing himself to breathe deeply, the walls of the cockpit stopped closing in on him, and his heart started working again. He unhooked his sweat-stained cowl and threw it to the side, staring out the window at the hypnotizing view of hyperspace.

The eerie silence of space only has a moment to invade Ben's mind before the lights of hyperspace suck it out of him the next instant. The silencer had only recently been fitted with a hyperdrive, one that had nothing on the one his father had installed on the _Falcon_ , no doubt illegally. As it was, his ship could only go so fast without being torn apart in the vacuum of space, and it have him plenty of time to think. It was time that he would have given anything not to have.

He'd taken off his gloves and looked down at his empty, naked hands. They looked so lonely, so afraid despite being so strong. Starving. For the first time, he saw them as they were. No longer did they belong to anyone else, not Snoke, not Hux, not the First Order, not even Kylo Ren. They were Ben's hands, _his_ hands. All these years they'd screamed at him to set them free from their black, leather prison. Now they sat as silent as breath in his lap, asking only one thing of him now: that they could hold her, feel her.

This time, he wouldn't deny them.


	3. Chapter 3

She wanted him. She _needed_ him. Something kicked inside her, and she wasn't sure if it was the child or her own stifling anxiety. Where was he at that moment? What was he thinking about? Was he as afraid as she was, or more so?

The final hour that it took to arrive at Ahch-To seemed to stretch out until it spanned a lifetime.

The low hum of hyperspace traveling up through the co-pilot's chair lulled Rey's exhausted mind. She didn't know that she'd fallen back asleep until the jolt of the _Falcon_ coming out of hyperspace coupled with Chewies loud but gentle growl woke her up again. The first thing she saw was the celestially-glowing blue planet getting closer to them every second. They'd made it. Now all she had to do was wait for him.

The day after Rey and Chewie arrived, a solitary black fighter emerged from the blinding gray of the Ahch-To sky. Though it was microscopically far away, Rey could feel Ben's presence on it as though he were only a few feet away from her. Her eyes traced its path as it streaked across the clouds, inching closer and closer to the island.

The moment Ben's Silencer touched down at the base of the island, Rey's chest swelled with sea-spray and long-forgotten relief. A moment later she was making her way down the steps of the temple as fast as she could without falling over. A furious gale picked up, screaming into her face, but though tears now blurred her vision, she didn't stop or fumble until she reached him.

And there he was. In flesh and blood, as real as anything. He stood alone beside his ship, already removing his gloves and his cowl despite the cold. His gaze was fasted onto her, and hers onto him. This time, the tears weren't from the wind, but from something else that had begun to kick inside both of them.

Finally, the surreality of the moment passed over them, and Rey found herself leaping into his arms faster than she could hold herself back. He held her so tightly she thought she might die, and the tears kept coming, stinging her frozen face, smarting against her tongue as she pressed her cheek into his warm shoulder.

They parted, and Ben pressed his forehead against hers, holding her face in his hands. Eyes closed, they let the bond ebb between them, a tidal wave of relief and awe cleansing the fires in their bones.

"I thought you wouldn't come," Rey breathed into the small space between their lips.

"Why would you think that?"

Rey smiled. "Why did it take you so long?"

"New hyperdrive," Ben answered, "extremely slow."

"Oh," said Rey, her smile growing. "I expected you to say that you were tied down by work, or something."

"Relax, scavenger, it's only been a day, hasn't it? Or has the space-time continuum suddenly shifted while I was away?"

Rey sighed. "It's been a day too long." Her voice turned surprisingly husky, and Ben noticed that her hands had slid down to rest firmly at his sides. He felt his ears getting hot beneath his hair, and he was never so glad that it was long enough to hide them. Her fingers burrowed into his skin, and he marveled at the way she could reach him even under all the layers of black fabric.

"Indeed it has," he said. He made the slightest move to kiss her, but Rey lightly placed her fingers against his lips, restraining him in the most infuriatingly gentle way.

"Wait, Ben. We need to talk." She felt his desire spike once then subside. "There's someone here who would like to see you."

"Chewie?" said Ben.

Rey laughed. "No, although he would also like to speak with you later. He's really missed you."

Ben's face fell. "I know."

Taking his hand, Rey said, "Come with me," and led him up the sloping, chaotic steps of the island.

Luke Skywalker - or what had once been Luke Skywalker - gazed down upon the island from his lonely vantage point on the ledge that protruded from the empty Jedi temple. The vast, gray ocean that bathed most of the planet reflected the light of its two suns, making his spirit glow a bright, otherworldly blue. The Jedi could take any form they wished once they had returned to the Force, but for this occasion, Luke knew that he wanted his nephew to see him as he saw him last. For that reason, he'd chosen to manifest his spirit in a more tangible, less ghostly form. He didn't want to draw too much attention to the fact that he was no longer alive, and thus distract them from the issue at hand.

Ben Solo heaved as Rey led him up the last few steps leading into the temple. The great stone walls bellowed his gasping breaths back at him, each echo followed immediately by a ringing silence. The cavernous space seemed to consume any sound that entered it, rather than letting it reverberate forever like any other cave-like ruin in the galaxy. Rey's hand still held tightly to his, and he could feel her anxiety trembling in her fingertips.

The moment he saw him, standing solitary on that ledge, robes stiff and unmoving as though the powerful gusts of wind that assaulted the face of the island could barely hope to even touch him in whatever plane he now existed. Luke's ghost turned to face his nephew as Rey led him into the light. When he could finally see clearly the face of the boy he once thought he'd lost forever, he smiled, and it felt like Ben had only seen him yesterday. The pure warmth of the love in his ancient, faraway eyes bridged the gap of years of pain and suffering between the two, and Ben remembered with a shock what it felt like to want to run into someone's arms and let them hold you as long as they could.

"Hello, Rey from Nowhere," he said, turning slightly to acknowledge her presence. Turning back to his nephew, he said, "Ben," as though the name alone held all the weight of the universe.

Barely taking his eyes off his uncle, Ben said, "What's this about, Rey?"

Rey had also fixed an intent stare on the timelessly old man. "I was going to ask him that when you arrived," she said. "Master Skywalker, why are you here?"

Luke had relaxed his composure significantly so that he looked less like a Jedi and more like a man who'd never had a care in his life. His eyes, of course, betrayed the truth of all that weighed him down, but his voice was clear and unfaltering as he said, "Why shouldn't I be here? I like it here, have always liked it here." It didn't sound like a lie coming from him.

Rey wasn't phased for a moment by the act. "Luke, please. Just tell us what's going on."

"You want to know what's going on?" he said amusedly. "I'll tell you what's going on, even though you already know." Rey and Ben drew in a short, collective breath. "You two are what's going on."

"I don't understand," said Ben.

"Of course you don't," said Luke, "Nobody does, and most likely nobody ever will. That is, nobody but the Force."

"The Force?" they both said.

The short, dusty laugh that escaped from Luke's non-existent chest sounded more alive than he looked. "Despite having no distinct form or being, the Force is quite intuitive about...well, everything."

Although the two young souls seemed to understand what he was saying, he could see in their frozen faces that they still had no idea what he was getting at. He decided to simplify things a bit.

"Soul-fasted," he said more to himself than to them, adding, "News travels fast when you're a part of the Cosmic Force".

Rey caught her breath, squeezing Ben's hand tighter. She wasn't afraid. In fact, she was relieved that Luke already knew, as she still had no idea how she would explain it to anyone when the time came. Resting a shaking hand over her stomach, she asked, "What does it mean?"

Luke's mischievous smile grew. "You know what it means, Rey."

The answer came to her like a sudden spark of light, and her face began to light up. "I am pregnant. But not with a child."

"Not yet, at least," said Luke.

Ben looked back and forth between Rey and Luke in disbelief. Luke shot him a look that told him all he needed to know. Searching through their bond, Ben could feel the impossibly persistent truth of it all, though it still didn't make any sense.

"What do you mean, not yet?"

Luke said, "I mean that the product of your most recent liaison through the Force _was_ a living essence. However, because you have not yet shared a... _physical_ union, the essence has not yet taken the physical form of a fetus. I must say that you two have created a phenomenon that I never came across in all my years of searching through Jedi history, and while that doesn't mean it's never happened before, it never came to my attention, or the attention of whoever wrote the original Jedi texts. It is, at the very least, an extremely rare and beautiful occurrence. Once this is all over, I highly encourage you to look further into this together."

"So, because Ben and I haven't been together _physically_ ," Rey cut in, "I'm not really pregnant, or at least not fully."

"That's the basic idea, yes," said Luke.

"What if...I mean...what if I...don't want to have the child?" Rey could feel Ben's eyes moving to rest on her, his hand stiffening in her grasp. He was afraid of this, she knew that. She also knew that he had more or less resigned himself to the imminence of becoming a father, and now that Rey had pulled the proverbial rug out from under him, he had no idea what to think.

"If you chose not to go through with a physical union," Luke said, moving closer to Rey, "the living essence you now carry inside you will remain there like a thought you can't get out of your mind. It shouldn't cause you any pain, but it will eventually die out if there is no body to hold it."

Rey suddenly felt as though her stomach had turned to dust and her chest had begun to collapse. Sensing her fear, Luke reached out and held her hand. She would have been surprised at how real he felt if it weren't for the chaos of emotions in her mind.

"It's your choice, Rey," he said, his voice speaking only to her, " _You_ are the mother."

 _Mother_

Rey couldn't say how many times in her life the word had crossed her mind. The one word she could never understand yet had craved more than anything else. The thing she could now be if she so chose. If she wanted it.

But what if she didn't want it? What then?

What would they do, she and Ben?


	4. Chapter 4

"Rey, wait!" Ben struggled to keep up with her as she trudged up a seemingly unending hill that felt more like a mountain.

Rey was too busy consuming cold ocean air to respond. Her lungs worked overtime and her heart beat furiously, but she felt strangely calm, almost as though she were having an out-of-body experience. Nothing made sense, but she knew she'd have to make sense of everything sooner or later.

When he reached the peak, Rey had already sat down and commenced holding her legs together in a tight ball, one of her many subtle ways of coping with stressful situations.

"Rey," he said, crouching down beside her.

"I can't." Her voice was tear stained, words muffled by the damp air.

Resting a hand on her shoulder, he breathed a bit of his energy into her shivering body.

More to herself than to him, she said, "I'm fine. I just...I don't know."

"I know," he replied, trying to feel more confident for her sake, as though she couldn't sense everything else he was feeling as sharply as he.

"No," she said, "you don't. You think you do, and I'm sure you want to, but bond or no bond, you're not the one living in my skin."

"You're right. I'm not the one who's pregnant with a ghost child."

"I'm sorry, but aren't you supposed to make me feel better?" Rey sighed and stood up. Ben stood with her. He could feel the tears rising to the brim of her eyes, begging to be set free. "Why did we…" she began, unsure if she could bring herself to finish the thought. _All things happen for a reason_ , she thought to herself. _There is no_ why _or_ how. But that didn't keep her from wondering.

"I don't know," Ben admitted, and it dampened Rey's inner frustration somewhat. "All I know is that you shouldn't have to face this alone." Straightening up, Ben began to walk back down the hill.

"Where are you going?" Rey said.

Ben turned to look back up at her, not even attempting to disguise his amusement at her expression. "I'm going to look for a place to stay for the night. You wouldn't happen to know a place like that, would you?"

Rey scoffed playfully at him. "You know the small village near the base of the island, the one we passed through to get to the temple stairs?"

"Yes."

"Well the huts are usually unoccupied, and I'm sure the island natives wouldn't mind if you used one for a night or two."

* * *

The light of the fire cast a warm glow over Ben's face as he sat alone inside one of the abandoned huts that night. The cocooned space was bathed in the heat of the meager flame he'd been able to conjure up, and he wondered if the builders of this temple village had known some secret method for containing warmth even though the weather outside blew as cold as the snow on Starkiller Base.

Rey had not joined him. He wasn't surprised. Nor did she come to join his lonely post the next night, or the next. He didn't blame her in the slightest. He could only imagine how uncomfortable her situation must be. All he knew was that he longed to hold her in his arms, to kiss her lips and her face and her body until neither of them could feel any more pain.

Rey's thoughts were locked in an ongoing battle between the difficult choice at hand and Ben. Usually each time she thought of the former, the latter would follow hot on it's tails, demanding to be known, drawing her gaze towards the hut where he was staying. Rey longed to feel the softness of his battle scarred skin against hers, to look into his eyes and know, for the first time in her life, that she belonged somewhere with someone. But she wouldn't go to him. She couldn't, though she had no idea why.

During the day they practiced their fighting with each other and conversed further with the Force, who often appeared to them in the form of the Grand Master Yoda, who was always more than happy to answer their questions. Apart from these things, they also found time to perform more mundane tasks such as fishing, shooing porgs away from their food, and pretending not to notice one another. They failed miserably at each of these tasks, resulting in no small measure of torment for both of them. However, it was no small relief for both of them that Chewie, the centuries-old wookie, Ben's closest and dearest friend and uncle long ago, and Rey's surrogate father-figure more recently, was there to help them stay sane.

When they bathed, using one of the small waterfalls spilling rainwater off the sides of the island as a makeshift 'fresher, they either took turns or, if they were greedy, washed together, subconsciously averting their gazes from one another once the clothes had come off.

When they went to sleep, they dreamt of their could-be child and of the galaxy to come, the galaxy that it would live in, grow up in, thrive in, a galaxy of peace and hope and peoples who learned to trust and to love one another instead of hate and fight amongst themselves. A galaxy freed from the chains of war.

They also dreamt about each other, and when they did, they talked as though they were awake. It was the only way that they could reach each other it seemed; their waking selves were too stubborn and confused. Their subconscious selves found other ways of conversing.

In Rey's dreams, she remembered the first time he touched her, in the forest on Takodana, his gloved hand caressing her face, his arms carrying her to his ship and then to his room on Starkiller Base. She remembered his fingers reaching into her mind and finding more than he could have ever imagined, but taking nothing without her permission.

She remembered seeing him for the first time through the Bond, feeling the pain of his past mingle with that of hers, reaching out her hand for him to take it and feeling for the first time that she wasn't alone in the galaxy. She remembered how they fought together, back to back against Snoke's red guards after he killed him to save her life, remembered the heat of his passion flowing through her veins. She remembered the light in his eyes when he begged her to join him, and the shards of his broken heart piercing her soul when she refused. She remembered the way he knelt on the ground before her, so far below her, so far away that she was the only one who could see him, the way his eyes pleaded once more, and how she promised herself that she would wait for him before closing the door, shutting off the Bond for at least a month.

The Bond remained closed until the cold, lonely night that seemed even colder and lonelier than all the rest. The night she realized that she needed him more than she'd ever needed anything in her life. She wanted him that night, just as she wanted him now, and came to her, wanting her just as badly, and made her feel beautiful for the first time in her life. She wasn't just wanted that night. No, she was _needed_ , and she needed him. After that night, she became pregnant with a living essence of Force energy, and now she had no idea what she would do with it - what _they_ would do.

* * *

They were together, wrapped in a blanket of ocean and stars, no sound but the whisper of his breath upon her skin. His hands traced the pattern of her spine, a touch so cold and yet so warm all at once. Her fingers were laced in his soft hair, and when he kissed her lips, he kissed her soul as well, pulling her closer to him, pulling himself deeper inside her. Holding him close, her legs and arms wound tightly around him, murmuring the essence of his name, feeling it dissolve deliciously inside her. The universe stood still around them, while feelings of passion and peace cascaded within her, an endless dance of emotions churning in her chest.

Then something new ignited within her, a light that she could feel burning in her belly; it was their light, their shared glow rippling and radiating inside her. As they fused deeper together, the light began to take shape, and she could feel innocent, strong hands reaching out through the darkness to find her.


	5. Chapter 5

Rey paced back and forth in her tiny hut, all her energy fixed to one place in her mind: the child inside of her. The child that wasn't even a child yet, just pure energy concentrated into the form of a tiny being awaiting its chance to become something more. The more she thought about it, the more her heart seemed to fuse itself to the idea of the life she now carried within her. A life that could never awaken, never open its eyes and stare lovingly into her face, never wrap its small fingers around hers, never fill her days with laughter and possibility and new innocence. A life that could never come into being without its father's help. The light in her belly was strong now, strong enough to carry its own weight, its own vibration, its own pulse, though it had yet to have its own breath, its own heartbeat, its own flesh and blood. Not without him.

By now she'd lost count of how many times she'd gone back and forth between the walls of her hut, and the movement of the sun suggested that the day wasn't getting any younger. Rey finally put on a soft, simple gray dress that the caretakers had made for her upon her arrival (it seemed they'd begun to actually like her), made sure her hair looked reasonably nice, and emerged from the hut into the light of an unusually gorgeous day on Ahch-To.

Looking out on the ocean, shimmering in the morning glare of the sun, she shielded her eyes against the sting of the sea spray and the chilly wind that carried it, and noticed a figure below her. Ben stood on a lower cliff, seemingly practicing his fighting maneuvers with Rey's quarterstaff (she'd allowed him to borrow it for this purpose only). The light glinted off his bare arms as his muscles moved fluidly beneath a tight, black tank top and black pants. His boots, though protection enough from the sharp rocks jutting up around him, looked thoroughly tattered from her point of view, no doubt worn down from countless adventures she hadn't been privy to.

Smiling to herself, Rey closed her eyes and lifted her face to the brilliant, blue sky, spreading her arms wide and taking in the deliciousness of the wind that seemed to want to carry her far away. Her hair and dress billowed softly about her, and the sunlight warmed her skin and her heart. A shrill whistle brought her out of the blissful daze, and she realized it was Ben, looking up at her, getting her attention. She looked back down at him and smiled, making her way down the steep cliffside to where he was.

"Good morning," she said.

Ben nodded, as though he wasn't sure how to answer, his eyes squinting in the glaring sunlight. The wind blew his hair out of his face, exposing the scar that ran down his chest beneath his shirt. Finally, he said, "Your hair looks nice."

"Is that really all you can say?"

"What else should I say?"

"Well…" Rey thought for a moment, "I don't think you've ever seen me in a dress before. What do you think?"

Without thinking, Ben looked her up and down, allowing a hint of a smile to sneak into his face beneath his lips. _She_ does _have a woman's body_ , he thought, as silently as he could possibly make a thought that begged to scream so loud within him. _And a beautiful one at that. The wind blows the dress against her, outlining the elegant form beneath. The curve of her waist, her collarbones pushing through soft skin, perched beneath a long, strong neck. Her firm belly, containing so much potential for them both._ His eyes trail upward from her navel, stopping just below her breasts. He blushed, unwilling to let himself think that far. Even though he'd felt them, kissed them, tasted them, that night when the Force connected them, sent them to each other, allowing her to wrap her arms around him as he entered her deliciously and fully. In a way, he still couldn't believe it had actually happened.

"You look good."

Rey frowned. She wasn't going to ask him if that was it. Clearly that was all there _could_ be at this point. It still didn't make sense to her though; they had _fasted_ , and yet they were still so distant from one another. Perhaps the fact that it hadn't been _real_ , strictly speaking, occurring in two places at once, made it seem that much more dreamlike.

Without thinking, Rey's hand went to her belly, as though there were something alive there that needed protecting, needed a reassuring mother's touch. But there was nothing. No movement, no faint heartbeat. Nothing but a steady throb and a pulsation that was not her own.

Ben looked at her again. "Does it hurt?"

"No," she said. What she didn't say was that it felt strange, like something was out of place inside her.

She held out her hand to him. "Walk with me."

Ben looked at her outstretched fingers for a split second as though they were a miracle. Leaning the staff against a rock, he grasped them tenderly, like he was afraid that they might break if he held them too tight.

* * *

"Honestly, I'm fine, Ben!"

He'd been asking her how she felt for the past fifteen minutes in order to fill the windswept silence that permeated the entire lost island. It wasn't as if she was pregnant with an actual child! Although she'd begun to notice slight flutters going off in her stomach every other breath she took, which she wouldn't be telling him about anytime soon unless it meant she was be dying. But there wasn't any cause for worry; the Lanais had highly advanced healing skills for a technologically deprived people. And even if they couldn't help her, if the fluttering in Rey's stomach turned out to be really bad, she'd be living out her days surrounded by an endless ocean with someone she deeply cared for. But the fluttering had only advanced to a low buzz, and so Rey quickly forgot about it entirely as they trudged up the steep slope of the island.

The wind whipped Rey's hair around her face, and she'd given up trying to keep it out of her face. She'd also given up trying to outclimb her companion, as he'd already proven himself the stronger of the two at hiking up the rocky hill.

"If at any time you want to be carried…"

"You can shove the end of that sentence if you still want both your legs to work, Ben."

Ben threw his hands up in mock defeat. Rey looked down at the ground, soft, wet grass swishing beneath her feet. "Sorry."

"It's okay," said Ben, "I get it. You're frustrated. It's not fair. I know."

"It's not that," she said.

"What then?" asked Ben. He stopped walking, turning to look at her. His eyes were serious and ages-old in his young face.

"It's just that," Rey struggled to find the right words, "for the first time since Snoke's ship, we're together, _really_ together. We shared something that night, when we were both alone and we both needed to feel each other. But it still wasn't real. It happened, and now there's something new inside of me that I can't even begin to understand, even though I've explained it to myself in as many ways as I can think of.

We're here now. Together, for real this time, and the last time I saw you I swore to myself that however long it took, I'd wait for you. However long it took for you to see the error of your ways, to forgive yourself and reconcile your past with who you are, I would be waiting where you could always find me. But even though we both know that whatever happened between us actually happened, and that it happened for a reason, and even though you're right in front of me where I can see you _and_ touch you…" Rey paused, gulping down a wave of tears that felt like a rock in her throat, "...I _still_ feel like I can't touch you without something happening that could tear us apart forever. And It's been so long since we were physically together in the same space that I almost can't believe you're actually here with me. For the past month I've gone to sleep every night wondering where you were, hoping against every other rational thought in my mind that you were still alive and that you still felt the same. I'm afraid that if I close my eyes for even a moment, you won't be there when I open them, because that's how it _always_ was between us."

She grasped his hands and looked deeply into his dark, soulful eyes. "We have a chance now, Ben. A chance to mend everything, to truly be together as one, and give life to something that we created together. I know you feel the Force calling out to you just as much as I do, and we have an obligation to answer it. It's always been fighting for us to be together."

A gust of wind blew Ben's hair away from his face. Rey's skirts lifted slightly, as though they could carry her away like a parachute. Her feet remained firmly on the ground however, for which she was grateful. "So why can't we just look at each other and see that there's something there worth fighting for?"

A tear rolled down her cheek. Ben lifted his finger to brush it away, lingering to stroke her face, her hair, her neck. "Don't be afraid," he said, knowing deep down that she wasn't. "I feel it too."

* * *

Another night alone, another night afraid. Though their bodies lay not ten feet from each other in their respective huts, each as restless as the other, they felt miles apart, almost further than they had been when so much more had been keeping them separated. Yet now, when either of them might pluck up the courage to cross the stone walkway that connected them, enter, and risk never having to be alone again, neither of them could do it.

After hours of futile attempts at sleep, Rey sat up on her slab, felt the emptiness of her tiny, bare room, and the desperation of every soul in the galaxy trying to find a kindred heart somewhere as weightless and heavy as the darkness that surrounded her.

Pulling her blanket tight around her shoulders, she crossed the floor to the entrance and stepped out into the night. The stars were as clear as she'd ever seen them, in all her years of solitude in the Jakku desert with nothing but a rusty helmet and a handmade doll to comfort her, hear her thoughts. Reaching up with one hand as though she could touch them, feel them, so still even as they spun around her head in their eternal galactic dance of creation and destruction.

The wind, steady and gentle, carrying ocean spray over every inch of bare skin, made her shiver at the same time that something else did. As always, she felt him before she saw him, didn't need to break her gaze away from the blinding stars to see that his eyes were the same as hers. He'd emerged from his own den of solitude to taste the starlit ocean air, though for a different reason; while she'd come out to try to feel some semblance of freedom again, he'd come out to be with her. They longed for release in both cases. It seemed that only the night could help them see things clearly.

Rey said, "Just the man I wanted to see."

"The feeling is mutual."

"I've been thinking," she tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, an action which Ben knew meant some form of anxiety.

"What about?"

Rey sighed, and the wind rose and died again. "Nothing's ever going to change, nothing's ever going to get better or worse if all we do is stay like this, in this stalemate. Force knows why either of us chose to come here, but we're here now."

"I know why I came here," Ben said, eyes falling from the sky to rest on her face. "And I know exactly why you came. I think you do too."

Rey smiled, finally turning to look at him. "Right again. Stars, I can't even lie to myself when I'm around you, can I?"

"No."

For a moment that seemed infinite, their eyes met, like so many times before, and everything around them froze in place, coming together in an instant, and before either of them could connect the dots between thought and action, he grasped her face and brought his lips to hers.

* * *

Ben's mouth was so warm against the piercing cool of the night that surrounded them. Rey greedily soaked up as much of it as she could, as though it were more essential to her existence than the very air she breathed. She couldn't breathe when he kissed her, didn't want to breathe, or do anything else except kiss him back. His hands had made their way to her waist, and she couldn't tell if he was lifting her up or if she had literally levitated off the ground; she'd never felt lighter and yet more rooted to where she was. The stars could've come crashing down around them, the sea could've swept them both away, and she was certain that they wouldn't feel a thing.

"Rey," Ben whispered, breaking from the kiss.

"Yes, Ben?"

"I want to take your dress off."

"Are you sure?"

"I've never been more sure of anything in my life."

"Right here? Now?"

"Maybe inside a hut where it isn't so damn cold. But, yes, now."

It was in that moment that Rey realised she had nothing to be afraid of anymore as she said, "Okay."


End file.
